Picture a dictator.
He tightly controls the information that his population is allowed to see. There is nothing resembling free speech.
Now imagine that the country he rules over has imposed this sort of repression for centuries; and furthermore for those centuries his predecessors had exhibited intense jealousy over not just the freedoms but also the successes and culture of more developed neighboring countries. Repression of his people and jealousy of neighboring lands are practically traditions, which our dictator continues.
We’re talking about Russia of course. Russia’s ongoing psychological malaise resembles a jealous family member who feeds you untrue gossip about other family members. You had no reason not to believe any of it until you came across something that revealed their lies.
Or perhaps you’ve watched as a co-worker put all their energy into skillfully discrediting an office rival whose success and effectiveness aroused their resentful envy.
After a while people like that get really good at manipulating perceptions. They know it has to be done not overtly but behind the scenes, by having the lies come out of someone else’s mouth or tweet or blog post or news story rather than from themself.
Sadly, these destructive behaviors are not uncommon among individuals. And Russia has shown for centuries that a nation can behave like a jealous individual. With the notable exceptions of Gorbachev and Yeltsin, Russia’s leadership has always tried to erode the well-being and culture and freedoms of democratic nations. They’ve had plenty of time to get good at it.
Now let’s imagine that you are part of that effort. Imagine you are the new head of a collection of three troll farms in St. Petersburg, Russia, your predecessor having recently perished in an unfortunate… accident. You’re acting at the direction of Vladimir Putin, but he doesn’t micromanage because you’re both on the same page – and also because he recognizes your expertise in the manipulation of perceptions.
Here are fourteen steps that you would take to go about undermining the West and destroying democracy:
Step 1 Choose an issue that generates widespread outrage. For instance you might choose an incident where where the whole world watched a video of a police officer kneel on the back of a suspect for eight minutes, suffocating and killing the suspect.
Step 2 Have your trollers get a fake account somewhere and publish something that defends the police officer and claims that there’s something else going on, that the video doesn’t tell the whole story. A few people will believe it, simply because there are always a few people who respond to the lure of knowledge that the masses don’t see.
Step 3 Create a place for that group that enables them to gather online, and create a label for that small but growing audience that will help you track and manage your trolling efforts. Insert some cues, some semi-facts, without revealing their source, into random places in that online community. Promote the idea that all information sources from outside the group are full of lies. In other words, craft your Cult #1.
Steps 4-7 Repeat Steps 1-3 using an issue that will attract outrage from a different demographic which does not overlap with the first demographic. For example, find one where a healthcare professional advocates for a sex change operation on a nine year old child, against the child’s parents’ wishes. Create an online gathering place for the small audience who support the healthcare professional’s point of view, and create a label help you track and manage your trolling efforts in building Cult #2.
(In case it’s not clear, this is not a MAGA group. Rather, it’s a group that you’ll create in order to provoke the MAGAs. You have to create cults on both sides if you want a civil war, no?)
Steps 8-10 Repeat Steps 1-3 multiple times using issues that will attract small outrage audiences from a demographics. There are plenty of examples to choose from. The important thing is to choose news items that evoke outrage in the great majority of the population. There will always be a small majority who react in a way that is opposite that of the majority. Create echo chamber meeting places for each of them, and apply a tracking label to each.
Step 11 Make sure ad sales managers in the social media industry know about your outrage audiences and the meeting places (echo chambers) where they reinforce each others’ passions about the issue and develop trust relationships. Advertisers will pay a premium for placement in those echo chambers, as their high-margin products (overpriced diet supplements, investor newsletters, etc.), as the trust relationships will extend to the advertiser, reducing purchase resistance. This step will generate more than sufficient revenue to fund your trolling efforts.
Step 12 Sort all of your outrage audiences into two categories. Assign an arbitrary label to each of the two categories. For example, use colors (blue and red) or directional attributes (left and right) etc. This step will help you amplify the aggregated effect of your trolling efforts inside each of the outrage audiences. Again, if you’re going to generate a civil war, you need to raise armies on both sides.
Step 13 Begin trolling using the principles of goebbelsology. Soon, the various outrage audience claims will generate media that is so shrill that the value of freedom of expression will come into question among the leadership of both categories of outrage audiences. Since freedom of expression is the foundation of democracy, you will have taken the first step toward dismantling democracy in your target population.
Step 14 Proceed with the remaining seven methods of mafiology to complete the dismantlement of democracy.
Bill Maher is the boy calling the emperor naked when he says, “Part of the appeal of a Herschel Walker or a Donald Trump or any number of egregious a__holes Republicans have backed is in their mind the worse a candidate is the more it says to Democrats ‘Do you see how much we don’t like what you’re selling, all that socialism and identity politics and victimhood and oversensitivity and cancel culture and white self-loathing and forcing complicated ideas about race and sex on kids too young to understand it? Literally anything would be better than that.’ That’s their view, that’s why you can be a really bad dude in Republican politics and it’s not a deal breaker.”
Don’t you see it?
The same people who created MAGA also created MAGA’s enemy.
Again, if you’re going to create a civil war you can’t do it with just one army. A war requires opposing armies.
Divide and conquer. It’s a strategy that has proven effective since the days of Philip II of Macedon and Sun Tzu.
And it’s working today.
About the Author
In 1981 Wes Kussmaul, working with friends at the MIT Joint Computer Facility, created the world’s first online encyclopedia, implemented using what he calls “the world’s worst business model.” Over the the next year the addition of social features transformed the encyclopedia into the more sustainable Delphi social network, which in 1993 was sold to Rupert Murdoch’s News America Corp.
Wes is the author of four books about bringing accountability with privacy back to social networks. One of those books caught the attention of a group at the ITU, a United Nations agency, while it was building a global PKI-based source of trust that resembled what the book advocated. Wes announced its re-launch as The City of Osmio in a 2008 presentation to the United Nations World Summit on Information Society. Wes is also the creator of Stoanova, an approach to Stoicism as it applies to problem solving.
Wes is the founder of The Authenticity Institute, a provider of a PKI platform to licensed Authenticity Enterprises, which may be seen here. The outcome of the work of those Authenticity Enterprises may be seen at Authentiverse.
Let me see if I've got this straight: The lying and manipulation in BOTH parties is all Trump and MAGAS's fault. Right? Did I miss something?
https://rumble.com/v3xpbff-the-fall-of-minniapolis.html